California Assemblymember Martin Block (D-Lemon Grove) has introduced AB 503. It says that write-in votes can be counted, even when the voter who cast the write-in vote didn’t know, or forgot, to fill in the oval or space next to the write-in line. These votes would be hand-counted, but only if the computer-counted votes showed that the write-in candidate might have won the election.
The legislature passed a similar bill in 2006, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. However, he is no longer Governor.
In other California legislative news, Assemblymember Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) has introduced AB 459, which makes insignificant grammar changes in section 5100 of the Elections Code, which defines “political party.” This is a “spot bill”, a bill that will be amended later to include something substantive. Hill’s office won’t say what the subject of the bill will be in the future, but that it does not relate to ballot access or to Proposition 14, the top-two system. The reason California legislators introduce “spot bills” is because the deadline for introducing bills is February 18 and sometimes legislators haven’t yet decided what bill they want to introduce.
One more scanner ballot thing to worry about – to get screwed up with more chaos election cases in the courts ???
Section 5100 defines how a party qualifies to participate in a primary.
From the language of 5100 it is clear that entities whose nominees did not receive sufficient support at the previous election nor have sufficient registrants, are parties, but are not qualified to participate in primaries.
What it means to participate in a primary is defined in other sections of the Elections Code.
Only qualified parties participate in the presidential primary, and voters are segregated on the basis of their affiliation with qualified parties. In addition, only qualified parties may nominate presidential candidates for the general election.
Only qualified parties elect their central committees in a government-sanctioned process. While these elections are coincident with the June statewide primary, they are not part of that primary, and could be switched to the presidential primary.
Participation by qualified parties in the primaries for voter-nominated offices is limited to making endorsements on the sample ballot, and having a letter and contribution envelope distributed with the voter’s pamphlet.
Neither candidates nor voters participate in elections for voter-nominated offices on the basis of their party affiliation, qualified party or not, so it is erroneous to say that political parties are participants in the process. The legislature deliberately recast existing voter registrations to party preferences, and made candidate party preferences dependent on voter party preferences. According to Richard Winger, California voters have been permitted to affiliate with non-qualified parties on their registration since 1913.
Qualified political parties have minimal participation in non-partisan elections, beyond certain privileges in the constitution of precinct boards.
I think New York has the better idea. It is illegal to put ovals next to write-in spaces on ballots. Scanners are smart enough to detect writing in a write-in space, and capture it as well.
5100(a) is meaningless for future elections, and should be based on votes cast for a party’s presidential candidate (with those parties qualified as of the effective date of the legislation grandfathered in).
How many scanners scan write in spaces for any write-ins ???
It is a computer coding effort to just scan ovals – for light/dark.
The ovals have to be in quite exact locations.
Some regimes have connect-the-arrows votes for scanners to detect.
#5 New York had very specific qualifications for the scanners that they were purchasing.
For a scanner at high resolution that oval is hundreds of pixels, and there would some threshold number that would be dark for the oval to count as marked. It would be as simple to do the same for write-in boxes.
The scanners can handle ballots that have been folded, and inserted upside down or bottom or top first, so it is not an impossible task.
How about short names written in small letters —
Ah, Cao, etc. ???
#7 awe, cow, etzi hook
Lots of Asian-American folks with short last names.
Eu — the 1989 SCOTUS case.
See the Cao – FEC case pending in SCOTUS.
#9 Ho Li Cao
# 10 Would the Holy Cow scanner detect the names — written in small Asian American letters ???